I just asked the Warhammer Conquest team themselves on their Facebook Fan Page. The answer was quite simple.

So, nothing is planned…

I’ve asked them a few questions in the previous months (mostly about the leaked contents list) and it’s quite easy to understand the motivation behind their response. “No plans” in this context are quite simply, a clear No.

I can’t imagine anyone is upset over this, we never expected any and there was nothing to suggest we would get any. If anything it’s just nice to have this confirmed. No need to wait for an issue where they may turn up. Now we are free to go ahead and grab decals for any army we wish.

So what do we do?

Where to get Water Slide Decals

When you buy a boxed set of miniatures or a boxed game from Games Workshop. You’ll normally find you get an appropriate set of decals alongside your miniatures matching the faction on the box. For the case of the boxed armies, this tends to be a large multi-faction sheet.

The good side of this is that there are plenty of people out there looking to rid themselves of unwanted decals for very little amounts of money.

These decals do not contain faction badges as that would be in breach of Games Workshop copyright. But instead, these are more of a luxury level complimentary purchase to go alongside those chapter badges. The Space Wolf Wolf pack set look really useful for nailing pack markings, and I’ll personally be picking some of these up once I finish my paint reviews and get back to painting mini’s for me.

Another option is Brass Etch markings. These are very thin brass markings which are great for use on your models. I recently used a set of the Imperial fists badges on the Rhino I painted for my The Army Painter Review.

These are 3 dimensional, so you need to cut them from their metal sprue and push them against shoulder pads etc to fit them to shape. bit then it’s just a case of glueing them on with some superglue. But again, Just Search “[FACTION NAME] Brass etch“

How to apply Waterslide Decals

As Warhammer Conquest magazine isn’t providing any decals, this means they probably aren’t going to give a guide on how to apply them. so I’ll take you through the two ways below. (I’ll do a proper guide in the future). I recommend doing wither of these, after you have laid down your base colours.

1. The Quick Way

Cut out the waterslide decal, put it in some water for 30 seconds. pull it out with some tweezers, and use a moist brush to slide it from the paper to the miniature. move it around until it’s stuck.

This will get the decal on the mini, but the texture of it will stand out from the model’s paint texture and you will likely have a very thin glossy surround where the decal has some extra transparent support around the edge. you can take some of this back with some spray varnish, but it may still look like it doesn’t quite belong.

2. The right way.

get Yourself some Micro Set and Micro Sol. It’s cheap, and the bottles shown below will last almost a lifetime. Also, (optionally) get some Hobby Grade Cotton Swabs. (Don’t use normal cotton swabs, the fibres will come off them and stick all over your mini),

Cut the decal as close as possible, try to remove as much of that transparent surround as possible

Place the decal on a moist tissue, you’ll tell when it’s ready as it will start to slide when you press your brush to it. If you do it on your water pot and knock it, you’re going fishing.

Apply Micro Set to the gloss surface, slap it on, not to the point it’s dripping wet, but you don’t need to be careful either, it will mostly evaporate.

With tweezers and a moist soft brush (moistened in Micro Set), slide the decal to the surface. move it around until it’s positioned correctly. You can add a touch more Micro Set of you need to keep your brush wet.

You can leave it to dry, or gently dry and position it with hobby grade cotton buds. You’re just trying to pull away the excess Micro Set here. Leave it for about 5 minutes.

Clean your brush and then dip it in Micro Sol, carefully paint this over the surface ensuring you coat the whole decal. leave this to dry. best to leave it a few hours.

Once dry this should be so perfectly flat to the surface that you cannot tell if it’s a decal or painted on. It’s just that this part is glossy. All you need to do now is apply a matt or satin coat to rebalance the texture of the model and you have perfectly applied decals.